


And We Will Drink to the Sky

by antistar_e (kaikamahine)



Category: Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Genre: F/M, Half-Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-28
Updated: 2008-04-28
Packaged: 2017-10-30 23:49:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaikamahine/pseuds/antistar_e
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Do you ever wonder if the blind can see rainbows?</p>
            </blockquote>





	And We Will Drink to the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for all four games. You can read this here or [@ LJ](http://veritasrecords.livejournal.com/72816.html).

-

 

When Lamiroir sleeps, she dreams of the sun moving slowly across the sky, of rainbows and the way sunlight sparkled off the waters of the California coast. She dreams of rubix cubes, of putting a kaleidoscope to her eye and turning it, over and over like the sun rolls the earth.

She wakes when Machi runs his fingers down the electric keyboard they keep by their bedside, and she pushes the dreams away, sitting up to listen.

_I do not miss my sight when you are playing. Music is better than any vision,_ she had told him, when he'd first asked her what it was like to be blind.

She never forgets the dreams, though. She never forgets anything these days, as if her mind is trying to fill the thirty-year gap that exists in her memory with all the details of the present.

 

 

_All I wanted was the money,_ Machi says to her in Boriginian, and she almost cries from the want. She needs to feel his hand in hers. She remembers the days when she did not need it, of course, but those who have learned of nice things are loathe to give them up. She has managed to forget she has no one left if he is gone.

She asks him why.

_I wanted to buy you a present,_ he murmurs, and her chest hurts. He is nothing but a child, and in her imagination, she held him as an infant, kissed the soft downy fuzz of his head, gave him a bracelet identical to her own, but that is fantasy, because she has only known him for a short while. _I wanted to hire someone to find out who you are, that's all. But no one would help me. They said pasts are worthless, and messy, and for you to discover who you were ... you would lose your mystery, and they couldn't sell you anymore. No one would help me. So when the offer came to smuggle a cocoon, I took it, because the money was good. I wanted to give you something._

She whispers his name. She calls him son, and listens to his breath catch in a small, terrified sob. She loves him, and she doesn't forget to tell him that.

 

 

She tells them she will stay in California.

_That is not smart, Lamiroir,_ say the people who sell her. She tells them, in Boriginian, just where they can stuff themselves. Machi is here. She will not leave him.

(The air smells strange, and when she walks down the street, she can almost hear the faint, tinny residue of carnival music.)

 

 

She visits police precinct for some court-related chore or another, and she is surprised that the first thing she hears is music, reverberating through the walls and finding their way to her fingertips. She lifts them, faces her palms outward so she can collect it like dew in the creases of her palms. It is not perfect, but it is music; the familiar scales are like the vertebrae of her spine.

She follows the sound of it, and asks questions of those who pass her. It is the organ, says one set of footsteps. A former Chief of Police had liked to play, and since nobody had the heart or the funds to remove it after he was gone, it just stayed. Oh, it wasn't the Chief's office anymore, so she could go right on up and listen if she wanted to. It certainly added a nice twist to the police barbeques, that was for sure.

Grown so accustomed to hiding her blindness, it takes her awhile to find out how to get to the room that shakes from the force of its music, as she does not ask for directions.

It ceases when she enters, and she knows she has found the right room.

_Lamiroir!_ cries Trucy's voice, and instinctively, Lamiroir opens her arms not a moment too soon, as she finds the girl flying into them. Trucy's hugs are not gentle, but she doesn't think she minds.

_Was that you playing, Trucy?_ she asks, the veil in front of her mouth moving with her words.

_That was me,_ says Apollo Justice's voice, always too loud. He touches Trucy's elbow, reaches down to take her hand; Lamiroir feels the resonance of it through their contact. _My foster mother saw to it that I got lessons, and sorry, Trucy, but every time I listen to you father play, I come here and play actual music._

_You are adopted?_ Lamiroir asks, wondering why she finds this so strange.

_In a manner of speaking. No foster mother I had ever wanted to adopt me, and no birth mother came to claim me._

_Sad,_ she whispers, and he laughs richly, and they talk of other things.

 

 

 

She holds Machi's hands between her own. There is sunshine on her scalp. They turn on the spot, slowly, so he can see.

_It is beautiful, Lamiroir,_ he says in English. Of course it is -- to him, everything will be precious now that he had almost lost it. She is glad; now he sees as she does.

_It is home,_ she replies, and feels him move to look up at her with the obedience of a good son.

_Are we not going to travel anymore?_

She lifts her arm, feels the satin fabric of her cape fall down the ticklish slope of her underarm, and runs the tips of her fingers (they are her eyes, sometimes) across the intricate detail of her bracelet. It is still early in the morning, but her flesh has already warmed it to body temperature, so most of the day, she forgets it is there. Even when it is warm from her heat, she still can't shake the feeling she should make it hotter.

_I have been called for jurist duty,_ she tells him, even though she knows it means nothing to him. _We will stay for that. After, I am not sure._

 

 

 

She goes to Phoenix Wright without Machi, on her own speed, which is slow and almost gets her killed because traffic is too loud; there is too much of it here, and with a flash, she longs for Boriginia, where it is quiet and she can hear music in the way the world breathes, but it is not home.

He comes to the door. She listens to his footsteps, and her eyeballs feel tight inside her skull, like a headache is beginning.

_Lamiroir,_ he says, a question.

She says nothing, stares in the direction of his voice.

_Thalassa Gramarye,_ he tries, and she feels the rush underneath her skin, making every hair rise on end. Her shoulders trembles, and it explodes on her eyeballs all at once: a thousand memories, of smiling jealous men and her father's eyes, of rainbows and old-fashioned guns, of a big tent stretching in stripes of red and white like a candy cane into the sky as she flies up into it, blood pouring from her chest.

Her bracelet tightens on her wrist, grows hot, even though she cannot See.

 

 

He invites her to supper as an excuse, and she comes with a hand in Machi's, and he asks her why she is trembling and she lies and says they have the air conditioner too high.

When the door opens, she spreads her arms, and holds Trucy and Apollo to her, and she trembles and trembles. Her children. Her _children. Her children._

 

 

 

_How can we tell them now?_ she murmurs, taking a quick sip of her expensive coffee to distract herself. Her tongue is scalded for her trouble. The fingers of her other hand lay lightly in his palm, and instinctively, he gives them a squeeze.

_They are not harming anyone,_ he tells her, but she hears every layer of his voice and he cannot hide anything from her; he is gutted, too, because how can you tell two children -- your own children! -- that they cannot do what they are doing? In her mind's eye, she creates them, the swirls of soft blue color and glittering edges like windchimes that she calls _daughter_ and the flare of red like fire she calls _son_ mingle together, Apollo's hand to Trucy's stomach, sliding to hold her hip. Trucy laughs with her own voice, and she sounds intoxicated on their shared blood. It is not right.

She turns her head to him. _They must be stopped._

_How do you suggest we do that?_ Phoenix's fingers trace the creases of her palm. _We have no right to tell them who to love._

She ducks her head, because he has flown true. It would be hypocrisy, to pass judgments from their own lying lips. She is Thalassa Gramarye, who loved two men equally, and he is Phoenix Wright, who is married to a woman with ten years left on her sentence.

He shifts, leans closer to her. She feels the shadow of his face on hers. _Let them be happy for now, Thalassa. They are half-siblings._

She closes her eyes and clings to that word, _half,_ like it has any meaning. Half-siblings. Well, if they are only half, then that means they must need each other to be whole. They are only half of something without each other.

 

 

 

She hears the verdict loud and clear, and she waits by the door of the courtroom, until she hears his footsteps. He enfolds her into an embrace, and it has been such a long time since a man has hugged her for joy, and her breath rattles inside her chest from the sheer force of it. He hears her, and holds her tighter, putting his face into the crook of her neck. Slowly, like a child remembering a long-forgotten lesson, she wraps her arms around his shoulders. He is warm, and being held by him reminds her of that area between sleep and wakening, where everything is distant and she is warm to the marrow of her bones.

_Your son is strong,_ he tells her, and he means it to be comforting, she knows, because she has new reason to be terrified for Apollo in court.

She takes his hands and puts them on her hips. The length of his thigh is hard against hers. _So is our daughter,_ she whispers back, and hears him inhale.

She waits, sightless, and finally, she feels his nose brush hers, and then his lips. She kisses him, and for the first time, the music in the back of her mind falls quiet. She can hear nothing but their own breathing. They remain like that for awhile.

 

 

 

Each day, Machi wakes her with his music, and each note is a memory; rainbows and kaleidoscopes, Valant's hair catching in the California sun and the gleam of Zak's clover-shaped pendant. She walks with him to school, gives him a sac lunch and a kiss on the forehead, walks home on her own.

She spends most of the morning on the phone with Klavier Gavin, working out the logistics of the Gavinner's break-up. _I will gladly duo with you,_ he tells her, and she breathes in relief. She was beginning to think she would have to spell it out for him. _But I think we both understand why we cannot tour. Your voice could call the stars down from the heavens, but it cannot call me from the courtroom, just as I cannot persuade you to leave your past for your future._

She meets Apollo and Trucy for lunch. Her daughter lets her put a hand to her swelling stomach, lay it flat until the baby turns over sleepily, and she, in turn, lets her son comment laughingly on their similar tastes in jewelry. Thalassa wishes she knew what they looked like; she wonders if their child might look like her, if it would make them ask the questions so she wouldn't have to say the answer. She hopes Apollo will be a better father than hers, and she hopes Trucy will not leave it.

Her afternoons are her own, and sometimes, she is humming carnival music and shuffling cards when Machi comes home. That's why Zak married her, after all; she beat him in poker.

In the evenings, she kisses Phoenix's mouth in the smoky darkness of the Hydeout, his arm around her back and grape juice bottle in his fingers and her arms around his neck, poker chips falling from her hands, and she tries not to let it feel like adultery. She has no memory of losing her husband, and Valant and Iris are both in prison. It doesn't count.

 

 

 

 

Thalassa isn't fooling herself. She knows there can be no happy ending. Not for Trucy and Apollo, who love each other too bright and too fast, or for their child, who will See even before it can understand, or for Phoenix Wright, who willingly stays tangled in their web, or Machi Tobaye who cannot go home, and especially not for herself, cursed daughter of the Gramarye.

These stories never end happily.

But, oh, they are so fun to tell.

 

-  
fin


End file.
